The multiplex recording by the multi-track recorder is indispensable in the music production site. The sound of each musical instrument that together constitutes music may be recorded on respectively individual track, the volume balance of the sound of each musical instrument may be adjusted by the producer (such as mixing engineer) who considers the whole balance, and finally the two-channel stereophonic music may be produced (mixdown process).
During the mixing process, any audio effects, such as echo or reverb, chorus modulation and the like, may often be added as required to a particular sound signal, as is known in the art (effect process).
When music is multi-recorded, each players such as drum, bass, guitar, keyboard and the like may gather in the recording studio, and the sound played with band form may be recorded at a time as for multiplex recording. This technique, which is sometimes called the “one-time recording”, may be used, but in many cases, the technique is used in which each sound of each player may be recorded separately.
In this technique, the recording may begin from a part of the music played by the first player that administers the rhythm of the music, and the sound of the next player who plays his instrument to the rhythm with listening to the sound already recorded may then be recorded.
For example, the recording may begin in the following sequence, the drum player who is assigned to produce the rhythm may first play his drum instrument, the sound of the drum may be recorded on the appropriate track of the multi-track recorder.
Then, the multi-track recorder may be operated so that the drum sound already recorded may be reproduced from the track. While the drum sound is being reproduced, another player, such as bass player (bassist), may play the bass instrument, the sound of the bass may be recorded on another track of the multi-track recorder.
Specifically, the bass player may perform his instrument to the rhythm by listening to the drum sound reproduced from the multi-track recorder.
Then, the next player, such as guitar player (guitarist), may play the guitar to the rhythm with listening to the bass sound reproduced from the multi-track recorder. The sound from the guitar player may be recorded on another track.
The above sequence may be repeated for each of the other instrument players, and the sound of each instrument player may be recorded on the appropriate track of the multi-track recorder.
When a musical work is produced by using the multi-track recorder as described above, there are some situations in which the number of tracks available on the multi-track recorder might not be sufficient to meet the sound sources from the possible instrument players involved. In such situations, there is a technique called as “ping-pong recording”, which is well known in the art.
Referring first to FIG. 7, the usual ping-pong recording process is described. In the following description, it is assumed that a musical work may be produced by using a 16-track magnetic tape-based multi-track recorder 51, a mixer 52 with 16 inputs and two channel outputs, and a 2-channel stereophonic master recorder 53.
When the number of the instrument (musical) parts that are involved in producing a particular musical work is less than 16, each of the instrument parts may first have a one-to-one correspondence with each of the tracks of the multi-track recorder, and the musical signal from each instrument part may then be recorded on the corresponding track. Next, those musical signals may be reproduced simultaneously, and may then be mixed by the mixer 52 into a 2-channel stereophonic signal that may be recorded on the master recorder 53. This process is called the mixdown process.
In this recording process, however, it is impossible to record the musical work that involves the instrument parts whose number is greater than the number of tracks available of the multi-track recorder.
This problem may be solved in two different ways.
The first solution is to operate several multi-track recorders synchronously with each other so that those multi-track recorders can record and reproduce the musical parts of and from their respective tracks concurrently. In this way, the number of tracks that are physically available may be increased.
The other solution is called the ping-pong recording process, which is described below.
In the ping-pong recording process, when a musical signal that contains more musical parts than the tracks available of the multi-track recorder is recorded on those tracks, some of the musical parts that require a fewer tracks may first be recorded on those tracks, for which the mixdown may then occur. The musical parts for which the mixdown have occurred may then be recorded on any free tracks, and each of the remaining musical parts may be recorded on each of the tracks on which the musical parts for which the mixdown occurred had been recorded and which are now freed. Finally, the musical signal containing all of the musical parts thus recorded on the tracks may be mixed.
To provide an easy understanding of the ping-pong recording process, an example is shown in FIG. 8. In the recording sequence shown in FIG. 8, a 16-track multi-track recorder 51 is used to record more than 17 instrument parts (28 instrument parts in this example). The recording sequence may occur in the following steps.
(Step 1)
The instrument parts 1-14 may be recorded on their corresponding tracks 1-14 on the multi-track recorder separately. The tracks 15 and 16 are free tracks.
(Step 2)
The instrument parts 1-14 recorded at Step 1 may be reproduced, for which the mixdown may occur. Then, the parts, for which mixdown occurred, may be recorded on the tracks 15 and 16.
(Step 3)
The musical signal, which corresponds to the instrument parts 1-14 that remain on the tracks 1-14, may be erased, and the other instrument parts 15-28 may be recorded on the tracks 1-14 that are now freed.
(Step 4)
The instrument parts 1-14 that have been mixed and recorded on the tracks 15, 16 and the instrument parts 15-28 that have been recorded on the tracks 1-14, respectively, may be reproduced concurrently, which may be passed through the mixer 52 where provides mixdown outputs for those parts. The result is the 2-channel musical signal that may be recorded on the master recorder 53.
The 28-part musical signal may now be ready for the mixing by the 16-track multi-track recorder.
There is also a multi-track recorder that employs the hard disk as the recording medium. In the hard disk-type multi-track recorder, audio waves may be converted into corresponding digital data forms, which may be stored as a file on the hard disk. As long as any extra space is available on the hard disk, any existing data may reside there, rather than being erased, whenever new data is stored. When the ping-pong recording process occurs using the hard disk-type multi-track recorder, therefore, each file that contains the parts 1-14 recorded on the respective tracks may have been saved in the saving area other than those tracks, before proceeding to Step 3 described above. Then, the mixing may be retried for those files at a later time.
The following is the ping-pong recording sequence that occurs on the instrument parts involving 28 parts, by using the hard disk-type multi-track recorder 55. Referring now to FIGS. 9 and 10, this sequence is described below step-by-step.
(Step 1)
The parts 1-14 may be recorded on the corresponding tracks 1-14 separately. The tracks 15 and 16 are free tracks.
(Step 2)
The tracks 1-14 may be reproduced concurrently, for which the mixdown may occur. The parts for which the mixdown have completed may be recorded on the free tracks 15 and 16.
(Step 3)
The musical data for the parts 1-14 that have been recorded on the tracks 1-14 at Step 1 may be saved in the saving area in the hard disk, and the tracks 1-14 may then be reset to blanks so that subsequent musical parts or associated data can be recorded on those tracks.
(Step 4)
The parts 15-28 may be recorded on the corresponding tracks 1-14 separately.
(Step 5)
The tracks 15 and 16 on which the parts 1-14 for which the mixdown has completed, are recorded, and the tracks 1-14 on which the parts 15-28 are recorded may be reproduced concurrently, all of which may be mixed into a 2-channel stereophonic music that may be fed to the master recorder 53 where the mixdown may occur for them. For now, the musical work may be completed, although it may not be perfect.
(Step 6)
The master recorder 53 may be operated to replay the musical work completed at Step 5. The musical work may be checked that the mixing is perfect by listening to the 2-channel stereophonic music. If it is found that the parts 15-28 have the mixing balance problem, Step 5 may be repeated, where the mixdown may be retried. If it is found that the parts 1-14 have the mixing balance problem, proceed to Step 7.
(Step 7)
The musical data for which the parts 15-28 have been recorded on the tracks 1-14 may be saved in the saving area on the hard disk, and the musical data for which the parts 1-14 have been saved in the saving area at Step 3 may be loaded onto the tracks 1-14.
(Step 8)
The musical data on the tracks 15 and 16 may be discarded so that they can be reused for recording, while at the same time the tracks 1-14 may be reproduced, for which the mixdown may be retried. The result may be recorded on the tracks 15 and 16.
(Step 9)
The musical data for which the parts 15-28 have been saved in the saving area at Step 7 may be loaded onto the tracks 1-14, and Step 5 may be repeated, where the final mixing may be retried.
(Step 10)
The master recorder may be operated to replay the musical work. The musical work may be checked that mixing is perfect by replaying the 2-channel stereophonic music. If it is found that the mixing has no problem, no further actions are required. If it is found that the mixing is not perfect, Step 6 may be repeated.
The ping-pong recording process performed by the multi-track recorder using the magnetic tape as the recording medium, or the ping-pong recording process performed by the multi-track recorder using the hard disk as the recording medium as described above have the following problems, respectively.
For the ping-pong recording performed by the magnetic tape-based multi-track recorder (regardless of whether it is the digital recording or analog recording), before the parts 15-28 can be recorded at Step 3, the parts 1-14 that are now recorded must been erased. When the musical work temporarily recorded on the master recorder is reproduced for listening after Step 4 is done, it may be found that the mixing balance obtained at Step 2 is imperfect. In this case, it would not be impossible to perform the mixing again.
For the ping-pong recording performed by the hard disk-based multi-track recorder, it is impossible to hear the sound for the parts 15-28 while the mixdown is going on for the parts 1-14 at Step 2 and Step 8. Thus, the mixdown for the parts 1-14 must occur by imagining the sound provided by the parts 15-28 which are to be added later. It is natural that the sounds for the parts 15-28 cannot be heard, since those parts have not already been recorded at the time of Step 2. Nevertheless, this happens even when the parts 15-28 have been recorded at Step 8, and the musical data files have been saved on the hard disk.
According to the ping-pong recording process just described above, the sounds for the parts 15-28 cannot be reproduced for listening at Step 2, and therefore the mixing for the parts 1-14 must be carried out by imagining the sounds for the parts 15-28. Then, if the mixing balance problem is found at Step 6, the mixdown must be retried at Step 8. If the sounds for the parts 15-28 cannot still be heard after the mixdown is retried at Step 8, the same errors might be repeated.
In any of the conventional ping-pong recording techniques described above, the mixing process cannot proceed while listening to all the parts recorded on the tracks. Thus, the personal imagination and experience are required when the mixdown process occurs. Even the experienced mixing engineer might have the risk of repeating the mixdown process each time it should fail. To avoid such risk, the ping-pong recording process must be abandoned, and an alternative recording process must be relied upon. To implement such recording process, the multi-track recorder must provide more tracks, and the mixer must provide more inputs. This may increase the cost of the audio equipment that is installed in the studio.
The present invention is based on the observation of the problems associated with the prior art as described above, and provides a ping-pong recording method and apparatus that allows the mixing process to proceed while listening to the recorded sounds for all of the instrument parts involved.